a well grounded education: the role of perception in...
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A Well Grounded Education 1
A Well Grounded Education: The role of perception in
science and mathematics
Robert Goldstone
David Landy
Ji Y. Son
Draft prepared for the Symbols, Embodiment, and Meaning Debate, held
December 16-18, 2005
Draft prepared 3/28/07
Indiana University
Psychology Department, Program in Cognitive Science
Running head: A Well Grounded Education
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Abstract
One of the most important applications of grounded cognition theories is to science and mathematics education
where the primary goal is to foster knowledge and skills that are widely transportable to new situations. This
presents a challenge to those grounded cognition theories that tightly tie knowledge to the specifics of a single
situation. In this chapter, we develop a theory learning that is grounded in perception and interaction, yet also
supports transferable knowledge. A first series of studies explores the transfer of complex systems principles
across two superficially dissimilar scenarios. The results indicate that students most effectively show transfer by
applying previously learned perceptual and interpretational processes to new situations. A second series shows
that even when students are solving formal algebra problems, they are greatly influenced by non-symbolic,
perceptual grouping factors. We interpret both results as showing that high-level cognition that might seem to
involve purely symbolic reasoning is actually driven by perceptual processes. The educational implication is that
instruction in science and mathematics should involve not only teaching abstract rules and equations but also
training students to perceive and interact with their world.
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Scientific progress has been progressing at a dizzying pace. In contrast, natural human biology changes rather
sluggishly, and we are using the essentially the same kinds of brains to understand advanced modern science that
have been used for millennia. Further exacerbating this tension between the different rates of scientific and
neuro-evolutionary progress is that our techniques for teaching mathematics and science are not keeping up with
the pace of science (Bialek & Botstein, 2004). Politicians, media, and pundits have all expressed frustration with
the poor state of mathematics and science education in the United States and world-wide.
There will not be any easy or singular solution to the problem of how to improve mathematics and science
education. However, we believe that the consequences of improved science and mathematics education are
sufficiently important1 that it behooves cognitive scientists to apply their state-of-the-science techniques and
results to informing the discourse on educational reform. Cognitive scientists are in a uniquely qualified position
to provide expert suggestions on knowledge representation, learning, problem solving, and symbolic reasoning.
These topics are core to understanding how people utilize mathematical and scientific principles. We also
believe that the recent developments in embodied and grounded cognition have direct relevance to mathematics
and science education, offering a promising new perspective on what we should be teaching and how students
could be learning.
We will describe two separate lines of research on college students’ performance on scientific and
mathematical reasoning tasks. The first research line studies how students transfer scientific principles
governing complex systems across superficially dissimilar domains. The second line studies how people solve
algebra problems. Consistent with an embodied perspective on cognition, both lines show strong influences of
perception on cognitive acts that are often associated with amodal, symbolic thought - namely cross-domain
transfer and mathematical manipulation,
1 Eric Hunushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, estimates that improving U.S. math and science to the levels of Western Europe within a decade would increase our gross domestic product by 4% in 2025 and by 10% by 2035.
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Transfer of Complex Systems Principles
Scientific understanding frequently involves comprehending a system at an abstract rather than superficial
level. Biology teachers want their students to understand the genetic mechanisms underlying heredity, not
simply how pea plants look. Physics teachers want their students to understand fundamental laws of physics
such as conservation of energy, not simply how a particular spring uncoils when weighted down (Chi, Feltovich,
& Glaser, 1981). This focus on acquiring abstract principles is well justified. Science often progresses when
researchers find deep principles shared by superficially dissimilar phenomena and can describe situations in
terms of mathematical or formal abstractions. Finding biological laws that govern the appearance of both snails
and humans (Darwin, 1859), physical laws that govern both electromagnetic and gravitational acceleration
(Einstein, 1989), and psychological laws that underlie transfer of learning across species and stimuli (Shepard,
1987) are undeniably important enterprises.
Although transcending superficial appearances to extract deep principles has inherent value, it has proven
difficult to achieve (Carreher & Schliemann, 2002). Considerable research suggests that learners in many
domains do not spontaneously transfer what they have learned, at least not to superficially dissimilar domains
(Detterman, 1993; Gick & Holyoak, 1980; 1983). This lack of transfer based on shared deep principles has led
to a major theoretical position in the learning sciences called “situated learning.” This community argues that
learning takes place in specific contexts, and these contexts are essential to what is learned (Lave, 1988; Lave &
Wenger, 1991). Traditional models of transfer are criticized as treating knowledge as a static property of an
individual (Hatano & Greeno, 1999), rather than as contextualized or situated, both in a real-world environment
and a social community. According to situated learning theorists, one problem of traditional theorizing is that
knowledge is viewed as tools for thinking that can be transported from one situation to another because they are
independent of the situation in which they are used. In fact, a person’s performance on formal tasks is often
worse than their performance in more familiar contexts even though by some analyses, the same abstract tools
are required (Nunes, 1999; Wason & Shapiro, 1971).
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Providing a basis for the transfer of principles across domains is a challenge for embodied cognition
approaches. Simply put, if cognition is tied to perceiving and interacting with particular scenarios, then how can
we hope to have transfer from one scenario to another scenario that looks quite different (for an elaboration of
this question, see Sanford, this volume)? One response, given by several researchers in the situated learning
community, is to give up on the prospects of transfer. The very notion of transfer is suspect in that community
because of their focus on contextualized knowledge. In one often-reported study, Brazilian children who sell
candy may be quite competent at using currency even though they have considerable difficulty solving word
problems requiring calculations similar to the ones they use on the street (Nunes, 1999). Transfer of
mathematical knowledge from candy selling on the streets to formal algebra in the classroom is neither found nor
expected by situated learning theorists. So in order to understand success in the classroom, situated learning
theorists place the emphasis on the context of the classroom and to understand success in the streets, the street
context is studied.
We share with the situated learning community an emphasis on grounded knowledge. However, we mean
something quite different by “grounding.” For the situated learning community, knowledge is contextualized in
the actions, social goals, and physical details of particular concrete scenarios such as selling candy on a Brazilian
street. Situated learning theorists equate knowledge with problem solving activities that are cued, in some sense
“grounded”, by the features of these concrete scenarios. Generalization is thus a problem solving behavior
exhibited over a set of scenarios (Greeno, 1997). Typically situated learning theorists criticize cognitive theorists
for abstracting away from these scenarios to explain generalization. However, for us, knowledge is not simply in
the extracted verbal or formal description of a situation, but rather in the perceptual interpretations and motoric
interactions involving a concrete scenario. While we look to embodied experiences to ground learning, we still
believe in the possibility and power of transfer across contexts. It is possible to learn principles in a grounded
way that enables the principles to be recognized in the myriad of concrete forms that they can take.
Typically, cognitive theories of transfer are expressed in terms of the acquisition of abstracted formalisms
that lead to the direct perception of mathematical structures and patterns. Instead, we believe that learning that
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transfers to new scenarios and transports across domains most often proceeds not through acquiring and applying
symbolic formalisms, but rather through modifying automatically perceived similarities between scenarios by
training one’s perceptual interpretations. In the following two sections we will 1) argue for the desirability of
cross-domain transfer of scientific principles, and 2) show how this transfer is compatible with a perceptually
grounded understanding of science.
Complex Systems and Transfer
Our claim for the desirability and possibility of transfer of scientific principles across domains is based on
the power of complex systems theories. A complex systems perspective provides a unifying force, bringing
increasingly fragmented scientific communities. Journals, conferences, and academic departmental structures are
becoming increasingly specialized and myopic (Csermely, 1999). One possible response to this fragmentation of
science is to simply view it as inevitable. Horgan (1996) argues that the age of fundamental scientific theorizing
and discoveries has passed, and that all that is left to be done is refining the details of theories already laid down
by the likes of Einstein, Darwin, and Newton.
Complex systems researchers offer an alternative to increasing specialization. They have pursued
principles that apply to many scientific domains, from physics to biology to social sciences. For example,
reaction-diffusion equations that explain how cheetahs develop spots can be used to account for geospatial
patterns of Democrats and Republicans in America. The same abstract schema underlies both phenomena – two
kinds of elements (e.g. two skin cell colors, or two political parties) both diffuse outwards to neighboring regions
but also inhibit one another. The process of Diffusion-Limited Aggregation is another complex adaptive systems
explanation that unifies diverse phenomena: individual elements enter a system at different points, moving
randomly. If a moving element touches another element, they become attached. The emergent result is fractally
connected branching aggregates that have almost identical statistical properties (Ball, 1999). This process has
been implicated in the growth of human lungs (Garcia-Ruiz et al., 1993), snowflakes (Bentley & Humphreys,
1962), and cities (Batty, 2005). These examples all describe principles that can be instantiated with highly
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dissimilar sets of individual elements, but with interactions between the elements that are captured by very
similar algorithmic rule sets (Bar-Yam, 1997).
Generally speaking, complex systems are systems made up of many units (often times called agents),
whose simple interactions give rise to higher-order emergent behavior. Typically, the units all obey the same
simple rules but because they interact, the units that start off homogenous and undifferentiated may become
specialized and individualized (O’Reilly, 2001). Despite the lack of a centralized control, leader, recipe, or
instruction set, these systems naturally self-organize (Resnick, 1994; Resnick & Wilensky, 1993). Many real-
world phenomena can be explained by the formalisms of complex adaptive systems, including the foraging
behavior of ants, the development of the human nervous system, the growth of cities, growth in the world wide
web, the perception of apparent motion, mammalian skin patterns, pine cone seed configurations, and the shape
of shells (Casti, 1994; Flake, 1998).
In the following studies, we will focus on one particular complex systems principle, “Competitive
Specialization,” because we have taught this principle in our own undergraduate “Complex Adaptive Systems”
courses, and because we have conducted controlled laboratory studies on students’ appreciation and use of the
principle (Goldstone & Sakamoto, 2003; Goldstone & Son, 2005). A well-worked out example of Competitive
Specialization is the development of neurons in the primary visual cortex that start off homogenous and become
specialized to respond to visually presented lines with specific spatial orientations (von der Malsburg, 1973).
Another application is the optimal allocation of agents to specialize to different regions in order to cover a
territory. In these situations, a good solution is found if every region has an agent reasonably close to it. For
example, an oil company may desire to place oil drills such that they are well spaced and cover their territory. If
the oil drills are too close, they will redundantly access the same oil deposit. If the oil drills do not cover the
entire territory, then some oil reserves will not be used.
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Ants and Food. The first example of competitive specialization involves ants foraging food resources
drawn by a user. The ants follow exactly the following three rules of competitive specialization. At each time
step, 1) a piece (pixel) of food is randomly selected from all of the food drawn by a user, 2) the ant closest to the
piece moves with one rate, and 3) all of the other ants move with another rate. In interacting with the simulation,
a learner can reset the ants' positions, clear the screen of food, draw new food, place new ants, move ants,
start/stop the ants' movements, and set a number of simulation parameters. The two most critical user-controlled
parameters determine the movement speed for the ant that is closest to the selected food (called "closest rate" in
Figure 1) and the movement speed for all other ants ("Not closest rate"). Starting with the initial configuration of
three ants and three food piles shown in Figure 1, several important types of final configuration are possible and
are shown in Figure 3. If only the closest ant moves toward a selected piece of food, then this ant will be the
closest ant to every patch of food. This ant will continually move to new locations on every time step as
I n fo Reset Adju st Qu iz
P a in t E ra se P la ce Move
C le a rGraph Updating
Number of ants Pen Size
Closest Rate Not Closest Rate
Time
Dis
tance
of
Food
Patc
h
to
Clo
sest
Ant
Figure 1. A screen-dump of an initial configuration for the "Ants and food" computer simulation. At
each time step, a patch of food is randomly selected, and the ant closest to the patch moves toward the
patch with one speed (specified by the slider "Closest Rate") and the other ants move toward the patch
with another speed ("Not Closest Rate").
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different patches are sampled, but will tend to hover around the center-of-mass of the food patches. The other
two ants will never move at all because they will never be the closest ant to a food patch. This configuration is
sub-optimal because the average distance between a food patch and the closest ant (a quantity that is continually
graphed) is not as small as it would be if each of the ants specialized for a different food pile. On the other hand,
if all of the ants move equally quickly, then they will quickly converge to the same screen location. This also
results in a sub-optimal solution because the ants do not cover the entire set of resources well – there will be
patches that do no have any nearby ant. Finally, if the closest ant moves more quickly than the other ants but the
other ants move too, then a nearly optimal configuration is achieved. Although one ant will initially move more
quickly toward all selected food patches than the other ants, eventually it will specialize to one patch and the
other ants will then be the closer to the other patches allowing for specialization.
An important, subtle aspect of this simulation is that poor patterns of resource covering are self-correcting
so the ants will almost always self-organize themselves in a 1-to-1 relationship to the resources regardless of the
lopsidedness of their original arrangement if good parameter values are used.
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Pattern Learning. The second example of competitive specialization involves sensors responding to
patterns drawn by the user. Just like the Ants/Food scenario, the Pattern Learning simulation also follows the
three rules of competitive specialization. At the beginning of the simulation, the sensors respond to random
noise. But at each time step, a pattern is randomly selected from all of the patterns drawn by a user, and the
sensor most similar to that pattern adapts to become more similar to that pattern at a particular rate. All of the
other sensors adapt towards the selected pattern at another rate. Users can reset sensors to become random again,
draw patterns, erase patterns, copy patterns, add noise, start/stop pattern learning, and change a number of
parameters. The most important parameters are the rates of adaptation for the most similar and not most similar
Figure 2. A screen-dump for the simulation "Pattern Learning." Users draw pictures, and prior to learning, a set of categories are given random appearances. During learning, a picture is selected at random, and the most similar category to the picture adapts its appearance toward the picture at one rate (specified by the slider "Most similar") while the other categories adapt toward the picture at another rate ("Not most similar").
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sensors.
Using these two case studies of the “competitive specialization” principle, we now in a good position to
state our challenge for grounded educational practices. Our desiderata is a teaching method that will promote
transfer from one example of competitive specialization to another. How can students who learn about
competitive specialization with the ants and food scenario spontaneously apply what they have learned to the
pattern learning situation? Given the lack of superficial perceptual features shared by Figures 1 and 2, can the
transfer be due to cognitive processes grounded in perception and interaction? The next section sketches out our
affirmative answer.
How to Teach Complex Systems Principles
Powerful complex systems principles cut across scientific disciplines. We are therefore inherently
interested in transportable knowledge - knowledge that can be applied to domains significantly beyond those
originally presented. In setting the stage for our grounded approach to cognition, we will first describe a
traditional alternative approach to transfer.
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Transfer Via Formalisms. It is understandable why so many educators have been drawn to couch their textbook
and classroom teaching in terms of formalisms. The formalizations established by algebra, set theory, and logic
are powerful because they are domain-general. The same equation for probability can apply equally well to
shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages, and kings. Not only is no “customization” of equations to a content domain
required – it is forbidden. The formalism sanctions certain transformations that are provably valid, and once a
domain has been translated to the formalism, one can be assured that the deductions drawn from the
transformations will be valid. Logic and math are the best examples that we can think of for the kind of
symbolic processing that Glenberg, De Vega, & Graesser (this volume) have in mind when they describe
symbols as abstract, amodal, and manipulated by using explicit rules. This is not to imply that we believe that
engaging in mathematics is a purely symbolic activity. Crucially, we do not (see the last section of this chapter),
but it is the best candidate domain for symbolic reasoning, because the rules for mathematics are relatively
noncontentious, compared to, for example, the rules for language. Furthermore, students receive a significant
Figure 3. The basis for the isomorphism between the ants and Pattern Learning simulations. If only the most similar agent to a resource adapts, then often a single agent will move toward the average of all of the resources. If all agents adapt equally quickly, then they will all move toward the average position. If the agent closest to a resource patch moves much faster than the other agents but all agents move a bit, then each of the agents typically becomes specialized for one resource type.
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amount of training with the generic, abstract form of mathematical rules, and explicitly learn how to transform
symbolic representations.
Mathematical formalisms are the epitome of representations that abstract over domains. Given this, there
is some reason to believe that they will promote free transfer of knowledge from one domain to another. This
notion is endemic in high-school mathematics curricula, which often feature abstract formalisms that, once
presented, are only subsequently fleshed out by examples. Systematic analyses of mathematics textbooks have
shown that formalisms tend to be presented before worked-out examples, and that this tendency increases with
grade level (Nathan, Long, & Alibali, 2002).
Although formalisms may seem plausible candidates for producing transportable knowledge, the literatures
from cognitive science and education give three grounds for skepticism. First, the mismatch between how
mathematics is presented and how it is conceived by practitioners has been often noted (Lakoff & Nuñez, 2000;
Thurston, 1994; Wilensky, 1991). As teachers’ mathematical expertise increases, they increasingly believe that
using formalisms is a requirement for solving mathematical problems, even though this kind of strong
association is not found in actual students’ performance (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). Hadamard has complained
that the true heart of a mathematical proof, the intuitive conceptualization, is ignored in the formal description of
the proof steps themselves (Hadamard, 1949). The scholarly articles contain the step-by-step, formally
sanctioned steps, but if one wishes to understand where the idea for these steps comes from, then one must
attempt to generate the visuo-spatial inspiration oneself, without much insight from the published report. In
mathematics textbooks, formalisms are either treated as givens, or when they are derived, they tend to be
formally derived from other formalisms.
The second reason for skepticism is that formalism-based transfer can only work if people spontaneously
recognize when an equation can be applied to a situation. In fact, the connection between equations and
scenarios is typically indirect and difficult to see (Chi, 2005; Hmelo-Silver & Pfeffer, 2004; Nathan, Kintsch, &
Young, 1992; Penner, 2000). Students often have difficulty finding the right equation to fit a scenario even when
they know both the equation and the major elements of the scenario (Ross, 1987; 1989).
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The third reason for skepticism is that transfer potential is almost certainly not maximized by creating the
most efficient minimalist representation possible, one that leaves out irrelevant content information and captures
only relevant structural information. Formalisms are maximally content-independent, but this is the precise
property that often leads them to be cognitively inert. They offer little by way of scaffolding for understanding,
and may not generalize well because cues to resemblance between situations have been stripped away. Research
has shown that the content-dependent semantics of a scenario promotes transfer, and also gives valuable clues
about the kinds of formalism that are likely to be useful (Bassok, 1996, 2001; Bassok, Chase, & Martin, 1998).
Grounded Transfer. We would like to propose an alternative, intermediate position, to the extreme
positions that transfer should proceed via formalisms and that remote transfer cannot be achieved at all
(Detterman, 1993). Our position is that transfer can be achieved, not by teaching students abstract formalisms,
but through the interpretation of grounded situations. One motivation for this method comes from work with
students solving story problems with and without access to physical manipulatives that can be used to act out the
story (Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japuntich, & Kaschak, 2004). The physical manipulatives helped students
understand and solve the problems, and these benefits transferred to conditions in which students simply
imagined using the physical objects (Glenberg, Jaworski, Rischall, & Levin, in press). The process of
interpreting actual or imagined objects was instrumental in getting students to properly understand the
underlying mathematical issues involved in a situation.
Another motivation for this method comes from our observation of students learning principles of complex
systems in our classes and laboratory experiments. We have observed that students often interact with our
pedagogical simulations by actively interpreting the elements and their interactions. Their interpretations are
grounded in the particular simulation with which they are interacting. Furrther, because the interpretations may
be highly selective, perspectival, and idealized, the same interpretation can be given to two apparently dissimilar
situations. The process of interpreting physical situations can thus provide understandings that are grounded yet
transportable. Practicing what we preach, we now will ground our notion of interpretive generalization with the
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earlier described “Competitive Specialization” principle example from our “Complex Adaptive Systems” course.
The relevant simulations can be accessed at http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/complex/.
Our laboratory and classroom investigations with these two demonstrations of competitive specialization
have shown that students can, under some circumstances, transfer what they learn from one simulation to another
(Goldstone & Sakamoto, 2003; Goldstone & Son, 2005). In our experiments, we first give students a period of
focused exploration with the “Ants and food” simulation because it embodies competitive specialization in a
relatively literal and spatial manner. Then, we let students explore the “Pattern Learning” simulation. We probe
their understanding of the latter simulation through both multiple choice questions designed to measure their
appreciation of the principle of competitive specialization in the pattern learning context, as well as a
performance-based measure of how quickly students can create parameter settings whereby categories
automatically adapt so as to represent the major classes of input patterns.
Using this method, we find that students show better understanding of the Pattern Learning simulation
when it has been preceded by Ants and Food than by a simulation governed by a different principle. Student
interviews indicate that a major cause of the positive transfer is training perceptual interpretations of grounded
Figure 4. A standard visualization of competitive specialization, adapted from an illustration by
Rumelhart and Zipser (1985). Panel A shows the coordinates of seven objects, represented by Xs, in a
three-dimensional space. In Panel B, the starting, random coordinates for two categories are shown by
shaded circles. Panel C shows the resulting coordinates for the categories after several iterations of
learning by competitive specialization.
XX
X
X
X X
X
XX
X
X
X X
X
XX
X
X
X X
X
A B C
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situations. After exposure to Ants and Food, several students spontaneously applied the same perceptual
representation to Pattern Learning. The visuo-spatial dynamics of Ants and Food are aptly applied. In fact,
when originally presenting their general competitive learning algorithm, Rumelhart and Zipser use a
visualization along the lines of Ants and Food to give the reader a solid intuition for how their algorithm works.
This visualization, shown in Figure 4, depicts the adaptation of categories in a high-dimensional space as the
movement of those categories in three-dimensional space. Our students’ spontaneous visualizations have
elements in common with this professional visualization. Typical elements in our students’ visualizations are
shown in Figure 5. A student was asked to visually describe what would happen when there are two categories,
and four input pictures that fell into two clusters: variants of As and variants of Bs. The student drew the
illustration in Panel A. In this illustration, adaptation and similarity are both represented in terms of space, much
as they are in Figure 4. The two categories (“Cat1” and “Cat2”) are depicted as moving spatially toward the
spatially defined clusters of “A”s and “B”s, and the “A” and “B” pictures are represented as spatially separated.
The context for Panel B was a student who was asked what problem might occur if the most similar detector to a
selected picture moved quickly to the picture, while the other detectors did not move at all. The student showed
a single category (shown as the box with a “1”) moving toward, and eventually oscillating between, the two
pictures. Again, similarity is represented by proximity and adaptation by movement.
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Students’ verbal descriptions also give evidence of the spatial diagrams that they use to explicate Pattern
Learning. Students frequently talk about a category “moving over to a clump of similar pictures.” Another
student says that “this category is being pulled in two directions – toward each of these pictures.” A third
student also uses spatial language when saying, “These two squares are close to each other, so they will tend to
attract the same category to them.” In this final example, the two square pictures were not physically close to
each other on the screen – they were separated by a picture of a circle. All three of these reports show that
students are understanding visual similarity in terms of spatial proximity. The squares are close in terms of their
visual appearance, not their spatial distance. Categories do not change their position on the screen, but only in a
high-dimensional space that describes pictures. Ants move in visual space, while categories adapt in description
space. In doing so, both ants and categories are adapting so that they cover their resources (food or pictures)
well. Our students frequently find making the connections between adaptation and motion, and between
similarity and proximity to be natural, and much more so after they have had experience with Ants and Food.
How should we understand these connections? One common approach is to claim that Ants and Food uses
space literally, while students’ understanding of Pattern Learning treats space metaphorically or figuratively.
A B Figure 5. Typical visualizations of students expressing their knowledge of Pattern Learning. In Panel A, the student represents the adaptation of categories by moving them through space towards two clusters of stimuli. The similarity of the two variants of “A” is represented by their spatial proximity. In Panel B, a student was asked to illustrate a problem that arises when the closest category to a pattern adapts, but the others do not adapt at all: a single category is shown oscillating between two patterns. Note the similarity to the top panel of Figure 3 with the Ants and Food simulation.
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Movement in space is viewed as an apt analogy for adaptation. The problem with describing space as figurative
in Pattern Learning is that space is very concrete and grounded for students who draw diagrams like those shown
in Figure 5. Our alternative proposal is that students are using the literal, spatial models that they learned while
exploring Ants and Food to understand and predict behavior in Pattern Learning. There is a process where visual
similarity is thought of in terms of spatial proximity, but once that mapping has been made, students conduct the
same kinds of mental simulations that they perform when predicting what will happen in new Ants and Food
situations. So, we do not believe that students abstract a formal structural description that unifies the two
simulations. Instead, they simply apply to a new domain the same perceptual routines that they have previously
acquired. By one account, the domains are visually dissimilar. However, once construed appropriately, the
domains are highly similar visually. In fact, students seem to use superficial spatial properties to construe Ants
and Food. An interesting aspect of both illustrations in Figure 5 is that although space is being used to represent
similarity, there are still vestiges of space being used to represent space. In these, and other, student illustrations,
the categories are placed below the input pictures, just as they are in the interface shown in Figure 2. Even
though students have difficulty explicitly describing the general principle that governs both simulations, the
perceptual trace left by Ants and Food can prime an effective perceptual construal of Pattern Learning.
What is most striking about the students’ descriptions of Pattern Learning is the extent of knowledge-
driven perceptual interpretation. These interpretations are not simply formalisms grafted onto situations. Rather,
the interpretations affect the perception of the simulation elements. Students see single categories trying to
“cover” multiple pictures, pictures being “close” or “far” in terms of their appearances, and categories “moving”
toward pictures. To the experienced eye, identical perceptual configurations are visible in the two simulations.
Figure 3 shows equivalent configurations. The critical point is that these pairs are obviously not perceptually
similar under all construals. It is only to the student who has understood the principle of competitive
specialization as applied to Ants and Food that the two situations appear perceptually similar. One moral is: just
because a reminding is perceptually-based does not make it necessarily superficial. A superficial construal of the
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left and right columns of Figure 3 would not reveal much commonality. However, a dynamic, visual, and spatial
construal of Pattern Learning can be formed that makes the solutions of Ants and Food directly relevant.
In opposition to the traditional schism between perceptual and conceptual processes, our work on
transferring complex systems principles suggests that the perceptual interpretation process is key to generating
transportable conceptual understandings. Perceptual interpretation requires both a physically present situation
and construals of the elements of the situation and their interactions. Simply giving the interpretation is not
adequate. Like equations, standalone descriptions are unlikely to foster transfer because of their lack of contact
to applicable situations. When we simply give students the rules of Pattern Learning, they are seldom reminded
of Ants and Food. Physically grounding a description is one of the most effective ways of assuring that it is
conceptually meaningful. However, giving the grounded situation but no interpretation is also inadequate. It is
only when the interpretation is added to the presentation of two superficially dissimilar situations that the
resemblance becomes apparent. Students are not just seeing events, they are seeing events as instantiating
principles. This act of interpretation, an act of “seeing something as X” rather than simply seeing it
(Wittgenstein, 1953), is the key to cultivating transportable knowledge.
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Perceptual Learning. An important plank of our proposal is that the similarity between situations
governed by the same complex systems principle can be used to promote transfer even if the situations are
dissimilar to the untutored eye, and even if the similarity is not explicitly noticed. This claim apparently
contradicts the empirical evidence for very limited transfer between remote situations (Detterman, 1993; Reed,
Ernst, & Banerji, 1974, but see also Barnett & Ceci, 2002 for a balanced evaluation of the evidence). Our claim
is that the perceived similarity of situations is malleable, not fixed by objective properties of the situations
themselves. It may well be that remotely related situations rarely facilitate each other. However, well-designed
Figure 6. The design of an experiment how concrete visual simulations should be to promote transfer (Goldstone & Sakamoto, 2003). Better transfer performance was found for the idealized, relative to concrete, training condition, particularly for students with poor comprehension of the training simulation.
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activities can alter the perceived similarity of situations, and what were once dissimilar situations can become
similar to one another with learning (Goldstone, 1998; Goldstone & Barsalou, 1998). Our hope, then, is not to
have students transfer by connecting remotely related situations, but rather to have students warp their
psychological space so that formerly remote situations become similar (Harnad, Hanson, & Lubin, 1995). There
is already good evidence for this kind of warping of perception due to experience and task requirements
(Goldstone, 1994; Goldstone, Lippa, & Shiffrin, 2001; Livingston, Andrews, & Harnad, 1998; Özgen, 2004;
Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff, 2000).
Graphical, interactive computer simulations (Goldstone & Son, 2005; Jacobson, 2001; Jacobson &
Wilensky 2005; Resnick, 1994; Wilensky & Reisman, 1999, 2006) offer attractive opportunities for promoting
generalization. Principles are not couched in equations, but rather in dynamic interactions among elements
(Nathan, this volume; Nathan et al., 1992). Students who interact with the simulations actively interpret the
resulting patterns, particularly if guided by goals abetted by knowledge of the principle. Their interpretations are
grounded in the particular simulation, but once a student has practiced building an interpretation, it is more likely
to be used for future situations. In contrast to explicit equation-based transfer, perceptually-based priming is
automatic. For example, an ambiguous man/rat drawing is automatically interpreted as a man when preceded by
a man and as a rat when preceded by a rat (Leeper, 1935). This phenomenon, replicated in countless subsequent
experiments on priming (see Goldstone, 2003 for a theoretical integration), is not ordinarily thought of as
transfer, but it is an example of a powerful influence on perception due to prior experiences. This kind of
automatic shift of perceptual interpretation accompanies engaged interaction with complex system simulations.
In these cases, generalization arises, not just from the explicit and effortful application of abstract formalisms,
but crticially from the simple act of “rigging up” a perceptual system to interpret a situation according to a
principle, and leaving this rigging in place for subsequently encountered situations.
Perception and Idealization. In arguing for an embodied basis for transfer complex systems principles, it is
important to clarify what we mean to entail by “embodied.” To us, embodiment is compatible with idealization.
Following Glenberg, De Vega, and Graesser (this volume), we consider our students’ understanding of complex
A Well Grounded Education 22
systems principles to be embodied when it depends on activity in systems used for perception and action. Both
our computer simulations, and the mental simulations of those simulations are perceptual in that they incorporate
spatial and temporal information, and presumably do so by using brain regions that are dedicated to perceptual
processing. Arnheim (1970), Barsalou (1999; Barsalou et al., 2003; Simmons & Barsalou, 2003), Glenberg (this
volume; Glenberg, Jaworski, & Rischall, in press), Schwartz (Schwartz & Black, 1999), Roy (this volume) and
others have argued that our concepts are not amodal and abstract symbolic representations, but rather are
grounded in the external world via our perceptual systems.
Embodied knowledge has a major advantage over amodal representations – they preserve aspects of the
external world in a direct manner so that the mental simulations and the simulated world automatically stay
coordinated even without explicit machinery to assure correspondence. Dimensions in the model naturally
correspond to dimensions of the modeled world. Given this characterization, it is clear that embodied
representations need not superficially resemble the modeled world nor preserve all of the raw, detailed
information of that world (Barsalou, 1999; Shepard, 1984). Our experience with students’ understanding of
complex systems computer simulations indicates that simulations lead to the best transfer when they are
relatively idealized. Goldstone and Sakamoto (2003) gave students experience with two simulations
exemplifying the principle of competitive specialization -- Ants and Food, followed by Pattern Learning. Figure
6 shows the design for the experiments. Ants and Food was either presented using line drawings of ants and
food, or simplified geometric forms. Overall, students showed greater transfer to the second scenario when the
elements were graphically idealized rather than realistic. Interestingly, the benefit of idealized graphical elements
was largest for our students who had relatively poor understanding of the initial simulation. It might be thought
that strong contextualization and realism would be of benefit to those students with weak comprehension of the
abstract principle. Instead, it seems that these poor comprehenders are particularly at risk for interpreting
situations at a superficial level, and using realistic elements only encourages this tendency. Smith (2003) has
found consistent results with rich versus simple geometric objects, and Sloutsky, Kaminski, and Heckler (2005)
A Well Grounded Education 23
have found similar benefits of idealized over concrete symbols for learning about algebraic groups (see also
Wiley, 2003 for a review of the benefits and hazards of concretization).
Judy DeLoache’s model room paradigm (DeLoache, 1991, 1995; DeLoache & Burns, 1994; DeLoache &
Marzolf, 1992) has also found that idealization can promote symbolic understanding. A child around the age of
2.5 years is shown a model of a room, the child watches as a miniature toy is hidden behind or under a miniature
item of furniture in the model, and the child is told that a larger version of the toy is hidden at the corresponding
piece of furniture in the room. Children were better able to use the model to find the toy in the actual room when
the model was a two-dimensional picture rather than a three-dimensional scale model (DeLoache, 1991;
DeLoache & Marzolf, 1992). Placing the scale model behind a window also allowed children to more effectively
use it as a model (Deloache, 2000). DeLoache and her colleagues (DeLoache, 1995; Uttal, Scudder, &
DeLoache, 1997; Uttal, Liu, & Deloache, 1999) explain these results in terms of the difficulty in understanding
an object as both a concrete, physical thing, and as a symbol standing for something else.
A natural question to ask is, “How can we tell whether a particular perceptual detail will be beneficial
because it provides grounding or detrimental because it distracts students from appreciating the underlying
principle?” The answer depends both on the nature of complex systems principles, the learner’s cognitive
development, and what is easily implemented in the mental simulations. Complex systems models are typically
characterized by simple, similarly configured elements that each follow the same rules of interaction. For this
reason, idiosyncratic element details can often be eliminated, and information about any element only needs be
included to the extent that it affects its interactions with other elements. Mental simulations are efficient at
representing spatial and temporal information, but are highly capacity-limited (Hegarty, 2004a). Under the
assumption that a student’s mental model will be shaped by the computational model that informs it, the
following prescriptions are suggested for building computer simulations of complex systems: 1) eliminate
irrelevant variation in elements’ appearances, 2) incorporate spatial-temporal properties, 3) do not incorporate
realism just because it is technologically possible, 4) strive to make the element interactions visually salient, and
5) be sensitive to peoples’ capacity limits in tracking several rich, multi-faceted objects. Another empirically
A Well Grounded Education 24
supported suggestion for compromising between grounded and idealized presentations is to begin with relatively
rich, detailed representations, and gradually idealize them over time (Goldstone & Son, 2005). This regime of
“Concreteness fading” was proposed as a promising pedagogical method because it allows simulation elements
to be both intuitively connected to their intended interpretations, but also eventually freed from their initial
context in a manner that promotes transfer.
Perceptual Grounding in Mathematics
In the previous section, we contrasted the benefits of presenting scientific principles using perceptually
grounded and interactive simulations, rather than traditional algebraic equations. One reason why complex
system computer simulations are so pedagogically effective is that they mesh well with human mental models
(Gentner & Stevens, 1983; Graesser & Jackson, this volume; Graesser & Olde, 2003; Hegarty, 2004b). These
computer models enact the same kind of step-by-step simulation of elements and interactions that effective
mental models do. However, even though we advocate the perceptual grounding provided by simulations for
pedagogical use, our position is not that algebraic equations are ungrounded or that they somehow transcend
perception. In fact, some of our recent experiments indicate surprisingly strong influences of apparently
superficial perceptual grouping factors on people’s algebraic reasoning.
To study the influence of perceptual grouping on mathematics, we gave undergraduate participants a task
to judge whether an algebraic equality was necessarily true (Landy & Goldstone, under review). The equalities
were designed to test their ability to apply the order of precedence of operations rules. Our participants have
learned the rule that multiplication precedes addition. Our instructions and post-experiment interviews confirm
that participants know this rule. However, we were interested in whether perceptual and form-based groupings
would be able to override their general knowledge of the order of precedence rules. We tested this by having
grouping factors either consistent or inconsistent with order of precedence. For example, if shown the stimuli in
the top row of Figure 7, participants would be asked to judge whether R * E + L * W is necessarily equal to L *
W + R * E. These terms are necessarily equal, and so the correct response would be “Yes” for this trial. On
some trials, the physical spacing between the operators was consistent with the order of precedence – large
A Well Grounded Education 25
spacings separated the terms related by addition and small spacings separated terms related by multiplication. A
powerful principle of Gestalt perception (Koffka, 1935) is that close objects are seen as grouping together.
Accordingly, small spaces between terms to be multiplied together would be expected to facilitate grouping them
together early, consistent with the order of precedence. On other trials, the physical spacing was inconsistent
with the order of precedence, with larger spaces around “*”s than “+”s.
A Well Grounded Education 26
The influence of spacing was profound, and is shown in Figure 8. When physical spacing was inconsistent
with order of precedence rules, six times as many errors were made relative to when the spacing was consistent.
However, for problem types where the order of operations did not influence the validity of the equation
(insensitive trials) accuracy was relatively spared, indicating that the deployment of order of operations
knowledge was selectively affected by the grouping pressures. Several aspects of the experiment make this
influence of perception on algebra striking. First, they demonstrate a genuine cognitive illusion in the domain of
mathematics. The criteria for cognitive illusions in reasoning are that people systematically show an influence of
Figure 7. Samples from five experiments reported by Landy and Goldstone (under review). Participants were asked to verify whether an equation is necessarily true. Grouping suggested by factors such as physical spacing, regions suggested by geometric forms, proximity in the alphabet, and functional form similarity could be either consistent or inconsistent with the order of precedence of arithmetical operators (e.g. multiplications are calculated before additions). The above equalities are all true, but participants make far more errors when the perceptual and form-based groupings are inconsistent rather than consistent.
Grouping consistent with order
of precedence rulesGrouping inconsistent with
order of precedence rules
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E?
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E?
Spacing
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E? ?
Grouping by Connectedness
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E? ?
Grouping by Common Region
R * E + L * W = L * W + R * E
(9*o)*(c*c)+(f*f)*(8*k)=(f*f)*(8*k)+(9*o)*(c*c)?
(f*f)*(c*c)+(9*o)*(8*k)=(9*o)*(8*k)+(f*f)*(c*c)?
Functional Form Similarity
A * B + X * Y = X * Y + A * B? ?
Alphabetic Proximity
A * X + Y * B = Y * B + A * X
A Well Grounded Education 27
a factor in reasoning, the factor should normatively not be used, and people agree, when debriefed, that they
were wrong to use the factor (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). The second impressive aspect of the results is that
participants continued to show large influences of grouping on equation verification even though they received
trial-by-trial feedback. Constant feedback did not eliminate the influence of the perceptual cues. This suggests
that sensitivity to grouping is automatic or at least resistant to strategic, feedback-dependent control processes.
The third impressive aspect of the results is that an influence of grouping is found in mathematical reasoning.
Mathematical reasoning is often taken as a paradigmatic case of purely symbolic reasoning, moreso even than
language which, in its spoken form, is produced and comprehended before children have formal operations
(Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Algebra is, according to many people’s intuition, the clearest case of widespread
symbolic reasoning in all human cognition. Showing that perceptual factors influence even algebraic reasoning
provides prime facie support for the premise that grounding cannot be ignored for any cognitive task.
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Our further experiments have extended this observed influence of grouping factors on algebraic reasoning.
The second and third rows of Figure 7 show manipulations of other Gestalt law of perceptual organization.
According to the principle of connectedness (Palmer & Rock, 1994), objects that are physically connected to one
another have a tendency to be grouped together. Connecting the circles in Row 2 of Figure 7 causes them to be
grouped together, and experimental results show that when they are grouped together, they tend to group the
mathematical symbols with which they are vertically aligned. The third row shows that this grouping pressure
does not require physical connection, but rather can also be formed through implied common region. In both of
Figure 8. Results from a manipulation of physical spacing in Experiment 1 of Landy and Goldstone (under review). When spacing was inconsistent (right side of Figure 7) with the order of precedence, the error rate increased more than six-fold compared to when spacing was consistent. This effect was only found when equations were sensitive to physical spacing – trials where different consistent versus inconsistent answers would be given to the question, “Are the two sides of this equation necessarily equal?” if a participant were influenced by spacing.
A Well Grounded Education 29
these examples, even though participants know that the geometric forms are irrelevant to their mathematical task,
when the geometric forms are consistent with order of operations, far better algebraic performance results than if
the forms are inconsistent. The fourth row of Figure 7 shows that alphabetic proximity has an analogous effect
to physical proximity. Participants apparently have a tendency to group letters that are close in the
alphabet. If close letters, like “A” and “B,” are related by an addition operator, this hinders algebraic
performance; if the close letters are related by a multiplication operator, this facilitates performance. This
influence of alphabetic proximity on mathematical reasoning is surprising because by standard formal accounts
all variable names are equivalent and participants, in their explicit description of the task, endorse the statement
that the letters used to designate variables are irrelevant. Finally, the last row shows an influence of the
functional form of the terms being multiplied and added. The term “(c * c)” has a form-based similarity to “(f *
f)” – they both involve a variable being multiplied by itself. This similarity is sufficient to bias participants to
group these terms together. Again, this form-based group helps performance if the terms are related by
multiplication, but hinders performance if they are related by addition.
The cumulative weight of these results indicates that even the highly symbolic activity of algebraic
calculation is strongly affected by perceptual grouping. Most accounts of the importance of notation in
mathematics, and indeed of symbols generally, hinge on their abstract character. Since symbols are largely
considered amodal, symbolic reasoning is also easily assumed to be amodal; that is, symbolic reasoning is
supposed to depend on internal structural rules which do not relate to explicit external forms. In contrast, the
mathematical groupings that our participants create are heavily influenced by groupings based on perception and
superficial similarities. The theoretical upshot of this work is to question the assumption that cognition operates
generally like systems of algebra or mathematical logic. By traditional symbolic manipulation accounts, to
cognize is to apply laws to structured strings, where those laws generalize to the shape of the symbols, and that
shape is arbitrarily related to the symbols’ content (Fodor, 1992). The laws of algebra work just like this.
Multiplication is commutative no matter what terms are multiplied. Mathematical cognition could have worked
like this too. If it had, it would have provided a convenient explanation of how people perform algebra
A Well Grounded Education 30
(Anderson, 2005). However, the conclusion from our experiments is that seeing “X + Y * A” cannot trivially
be translated into the amodal mentalese code * ( + (G001 , G002), G003). The physical spacing, superficial
similarities between the letters, and background pictorial elements are all part of how people treat “X * A + Z.”
Although it would be awfully convenient if a computational model of algebraic reasoning could aptly assume
the transduction from visual symbols to mental symbols, taking this for granted would leave all of our current
experimental results a mystery. We must resist the temptation to posit mental representations with forms that
match our intellectualized understanding of mathematics. A more apt input representation to give our future
computational models would be a bitmap graphic of the screen that includes the visually presented symbols as
well as their absolute positions, spacings, sizes, and accompanying non-mathematical pictorial elements, as well
as the associations carried by particular shapes.
Conclusions
We have tried to develop an account of embodied cognition that is consistent with the goal of teaching
scientific and mathematical knowledge that is transportable. Toward this end, our chain of argumentation
includes several links. 1) We argued that understanding complex systems principles is important scientifically
and pedagogically. Seemingly unrelated systems are often deeply isomorphic, and the mind that is prepared to
use this isomorphism can borrow from understanding a concrete scenario. 2) If one is committed to fostering the
productive understanding of complex systems, then one must be interested in promoting knowledge that can be
transported across disciplinary boundaries. 3) Our observation of students interacting with complex systems
simulations indicates that one of the most powerful educational strategies is to have students actively interpret
perceptually present situations. A situation’s events inform and correct interpretations, while the interpretations
give meaning to the events. 4) Perspective-dependent interpretations can promote transfer where formalism-
centered strategies fail, by educating people’s flexible perception of similarity. Transfer, by this approach,
occurs not by applying a rule from one domain to a new domain, but rather by allowing two scenarios to be seen
A Well Grounded Education 31
as embodying the same principle. 5) Even algebraic reasoning is sensitive to perceptual grouping factors,
suggesting that perhaps all cognition may intrinsically involve perceptually grounded processes.
Considerable psychological evidence indicates that far transfer of learned principles is often difficult and
may only reliably occur when people are explicitly reminded of the relevance of their early experience when
confronted with a subsequent related situation (Gick & Holyoak, 1980; 1983). This body of evidence stands in
stark contrast to other evidence suggesting that people automatically and unconsciously interpret their world in a
manner that is consistent with their earlier experiences (Kolers & Roediger, 1984; Roediger & Geraci, 2005).
These statements are reconcilable. A lasting influence of early experiences on later experiences occurs when
perceptual systems have been transformed. A later experience will be inevitably processed by the systems that
have been transformed by an initial experience, and priming naturally occurs. When a principle is simply grafted
onto an early experience but does not change how the experience is processed, there is little chance that the
principle will come to mind when it arises again in a new guise. The moral is clear: to reliably make an
interpretation come to mind, one needs to affect how a situation is interpreted as it is “fed forward” through the
perceptual system rather than tacking on the interpretation at the end of processing.
An embodied cognition perspective offers promise of scientifically grounded educational reform in both
of our domains of empirical consideration: complex systems simulations and algebraic calculation. In particular,
reforms are advocated that involve changes to perception, or the co-option of natural perceptual processes for
tasks requiring symbolic reasoning. From this perspective, it is striking that developing expertise in most
scientific domains involves perceptual learning. Biology students learn to identify cell structures, geology
students learn to identify rock samples, and chemistry students learn to recognize chemical compounds by their
molecular structures. In mathematics, perceptually familiar patterns are a major source of solutions for solving
novel problems. Progress in the teaching of these fields depends on understanding the mechanisms by which
perceptual and conceptual representations mutually inform and interpenetrate one another. Specific hypotheses
for future exploration stem from an embodied perspective. How can we modify the perceptual aspects of
mathematical notation conventions to cue students as to their formal properties? The minus sign “-“ is just as
A Well Grounded Education 32
symmetrical as the plus sign “+” but subtraction is order-dependent in a way that addition is not. Should the
signs reflect this formal difference? Can physical spacing be used to scaffold learning formal mathematical
properties? Can we help students learn the order of precedence by presenting them with “A + X*Y” before
giving them the more neutral notation of “A + B * C?”
More generally, our analyses of science and mathematics have led us to reconsider what “abstract
cognition” entails. “Abstract cognition” should be interpreted akin to “abstract art.” Abstract art is still based in
perception – it would not be art if it couldn’t be seen. Similarly, for cognition, abstract is not the opposite of
perceptual, nor are “perceptual” and “superficial” synonyms. A fertile and novel perspective on abstraction may
be that it is the process of a perceptual system interpreting a situation in a useful manner. Interpretation
presupposes that there is an external situation to interpret. Often times, the perceptual system will need to be
trained in order to avoid superficial or misleading attributes. We believe that viewing abstraction as the
deployment of trained and strategic perceptual/motor processes can go a long way toward demystifying symbolic
thought, hopefully leading to the development of robust and working models of cognition.
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Discussion
Art Graesser: Part of the problem with transfer from one science domain to another is that the problems may
be rather different. If you use one solution you may have an isomorphic problem, but you are really imposing
it, trying to make sense of it. If it is good enough, you may say that there is an analogy, and it is that process
that helps you perceive things. Give that trajectory of how people make analogies, how would you interpret
your data?
Rob Goldstone: You do not want to have rampant analogy making if there are real, important differences
between domains. In part, what I am arguing for is not just the cognitive science of transfer, but I am also
making claims about what science pedagogy should look like. What are the principles that should be taught in
our schools? There I would make the claim for teaching the kinds of complex systems principles that I have
described. So, I do agree with you that it is problematic when you have principles that apply in one domain but
not another and you try to shoe-horn them into alignment. That clearly happens. But at the same time, exactly
the same formalisms often can be successfully applied in different domains. For example, I think some of the
most important lessons that we should be teaching in our science classes concern positive and negative feedback
systems. Naturally, the nature of these systems will need to be tailored to a scenario, but these skeletal
structures do arise time after time. Teaching these principles can be a lot more valuable than teaching a student
the name for some amino acid because these are principles that at least have the possibility of being relevant for
a new situation that a student is likely to come across at a later point. I believe there are a number of such
principles: oscillations, reaction diffusion systems where the presence of one element gives rise to more of a
second element that may destroy the first element at the same time that the first element is spreading out, or
lateral inhibition between neighboring elements at the same layer in a network. These principles are general
and do arise in different guises. It would be wrong to leave things at that level of description and say that we
have completely explained the system. We then need to adapt the characterization to the specifics of the
scenario, just as case-based reasoning researchers would have us do.
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Max Louwerse: I want to challenge your conclusions that just because something is formal reasoning doesn’t
make it amodal. I think that’s wrong. I think that if it is formal reasoning then it is amodal. What you’ve
pointed to is that there could be performance problems. So, I would want to change the claim to – just because
something is formal reasoning does not mean that perception can’t affect performance. If I’m teaching
predicate calculus in a logic class I’ll tell students, “Here’s a rule, modus ponens, that is sensitive only to the
shapes of symbols. But if I make the material implication symbol a mile long so that students have to walk
several blocks to see what the consequent of the material implication is, they are not going to do as well because
they have already forgotten the antecedent. But they engage in formal reasoning when they do reason.
Rob Goldstone: I’m really skeptical of the performance/competence distinction. When you are doing formal
reasoning, it is just physical manipulation of chicken scrawls. When you learn logic you’re learning that you
cross this bit out and replace it with another kind of chicken scrawl. I think very literally it is still just concrete
and perceptual. You’re just learning different types of transformation and translation procedures. In our
experiments, we don’t just get response time differences; we get accuracy differences. If you’re thinking about
it from a formal symbol systems perspective, you would need to say that people are coming up with different
algebraic tree structures based upon perceptual properties.
Max Louwerse: Why is it wrong to think that what I’m teaching my students to do is to behave like a Turing
Machine? Do you think that a Turing Machine would show the same kinds of performance problems that a
human being would?
Rob Goldstone: I think it’s revealing that Alan Turing described the Turing Machine in a particular physical
context. He wasn’t describing it only in terms of a pure mathematical formalism. He was talking about a
specific kind of machine that had specific properties such as tape heads that are moving back and forth. So, I
will take the more radical position that what we are talking about as formal symbol manipulation is what Newell
and Simon referred to as physical symbol systems. They are physical. They are based upon the form of the
objects. So it matters what those forms are and how they are processed. This relates to something that Dr.
Pulvermüller discussed yesterday. Word representations activate Broca’s area because part of their
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representation is their production. It’s not as though words are formal systems. They are being produced and
understood as scrawls or sound waves.
Friedemann Pulvermüller: Thanks very much for this important contribution. I want to add a little thing.
I’m fully with you in everything you say, especially with regard to education. I’m coming from a
neuropsychological domain called aphasia therapy research, and teaching patients language after lesions. It is
disastrous to see that the majority of therapists would present words and pictures in a far-removed situation in a
“naming game.” A neurophysiologist had a patient with global aphasia, and in testing her he asked, “Who is
this person sitting to your left?” (it was the patient’s daughter). She responded “…I can’t come up with it. I’m
sorry, I have tried and tried ….. My poor Jacqueline, I can’t even remember your name.” This is exactly the
point you are making. The situation and community of intentions count. The language game that is being
played is very important. So it is not just the relation between the picture and word that counts. Non-
communicative language wouldn’t even produce the same speech output. With regard to the
competence/performance distinction, if we think of the brain in terms of real neuronal networks, we may have
difficulty preserving the distinction. It is clear that the neural assemblies and their connections are the
implementation of both the rules and the words – the competence of the system. The activity of these same
networks is the correlate of performance. So, this distinction does not make too much sense.
Rob Goldstone: The only thing that I would add to that is that although I am skeptical of a
performance/competence distinction, I’m all in favor of having responses based on different types of
representations, giving rise to different performances on different occasions. Some of these representations will
give rise to output that looks more in accord with what we expect by our intellectualized understanding of logic.
But I think it would be wrong to say that those that do correspond to our mathematical understanding are not
done by cognitive, physical manipulations.
Deb Roy: I’d like to stay on the topic of performance versus competence and the question of whether we can
keep this distinction or not. Of course, probably everyone here is thinking of Chomsky when we think about
this distinction. David Marr used slightly different terminology, but his general idea was that when one is
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trying to understand a system, usually a complex system, it is useful to distinguish what it is doing from how it
is doing it. If you don’t have a clear idea of what it is doing then it is problematic to ask the question of “how.”
So, if we get rid of the labels “performance” and “competence” and rephrase the question to ask, “Is it still
worthwhile to keep Marr’s distinction?” Or, would you eliminate that distinction as well?
Rob Goldstone: I’m happier preserving a “what” versus “how” distinction, and I also still want to be able to
talk about errors in processing. We want to be able to say things like, “What we want to get out is a three-
dimensional representation of a scene, but if we use this particular stereopsis algorithm that combines
information from the two eyes, then we won’t get the desired output.” That is, we do need to be able to say that
the operation of an algorithm falls short of its intended computation.
Deb Roy: Then, I’d say that is completely in line with the original performance/competence distinction. You’re
still on board, but just using different terminology.
Luc Steels: There was more to the original distinction. In a usage based approach to language, the actual
variation and performance is influenced all the time.
Deb Roy: So you’re saying that that performance versus competence assumes dynamic versus static systems?
Luc Steels: You can tease out different meanings, but “competence” ended up being a description of an abstract
system without worrying about how using the system constantly impacts the original system.
Deb Roy: Maybe there is a family of interpretations. When I think of Marr’s “what” level, I never imagined
that it needs to be fixed. When one thinks of Chomsky, one may think that competence is innate and does not
change perhaps.
Rob Goldstone: For me, what is added with the performance/competence distinction is that it suggests that it is
useful to ask, “What would this system be able to do if you took away all of the contextualizing variables that
Dr. Pulvermüller just described, or all of the system’s performance-based limitations. However, from my
perspective, it’s exactly because of those contextual and performance-based factors that the system is able to do
anything at all. It doesn’t make sense to talk about, extracting out contextual and physical considerations, what
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the competence of the system would be. However, it still might make sense to ask, from a teleological
perspective, what the aim of a system is - Marr’s “what is it doing?” question.
Deb Roy: I can live with that.
A Well Grounded Education 38
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Author Notes
Many useful comments and suggestions were provided by Arthur Glenberg, Arthur Graesser, Linda
Smith, Manuel De Vega, Uri Wilensky, and in particular Mitchell Nathan. This research was funded by
Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences grant R305H050116, and NSF REC grant 0527920.
Further information about the authors’ laboratory can be found at http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/.